


Something Stronger

by Vector



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Community: het_challenge, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-07
Updated: 2007-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vector/pseuds/Vector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For prompt: <i>"I will drink you."</i> Imagine it as a line of Cid's, a drunken comeback - "I'll drink <i>you</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Stronger

The bar had barely started to fill up when Cid walked in. He was alone. Tifa wanted to ask what he was doing here—what he was even doing in Midgar—but she stopped when she saw the look on his face. Bartending instincts cut in instead. When he settled himself at the bar, Tifa walked over and wordlessly set a beer in front of him. Cid grunted.

"Gonna need something stronger than that." He chugged the beer down anyway. Tifa replaced it with a glass tumbler, filled it with whiskey, and left the mostly-full bottle on the counter by Cid with a nod. As she turned away to serve another customer down the bar, she saw Cid down the whiskey as well and refill it without stopping for breath. He seemed to be giving the new glass a few minutes to live, at least.

Tifa forced a smile for the customers as she pulled another beer from the tap. Sephiroth was dead and the world was safe, but apparently that didn't solve everything. She should have known that was true for more than her and Cloud.

Cid nursed his whiskey while Tifa tended the bar. She tried not to think about how much his dark countenance reminded her of her own mood these last few days. Then business really got going, and though there were a few lull moments when Tifa considered trying to talk to him, whenever she came close he looked studiously interested in his glass until she was called elsewhere.

Eventually, though, the bar cleared out, and Tifa walked back over to Cid. "Alright, that's enough. You'll drink me out of business."

Cid's brows furrowed as he looked blearily up at her. "You—your business can drink me out, for all I care." Tifa raised an eyebrow and he blinked a few times. "Whatever, goddamn it. Just let me drink." He reached for his glass. Tifa snatched it and the bottle away.

Cid glared. "Shit. 'Kind of a bartender are you?"

"Not one, at the moment. The bar's closed." Tifa downed the last of Cid's drink herself, and felt it burn warm in her stomach. "Now I'm just looking after a friend. Why are you here, Cid?"

Cid's looked off to one side and muttered. "Needed to see someone, I guess. Y'know, someone who was _there_. You were the only one I knew how to find." He glanced around the bar. "Cloud around?"

Tifa felt a twinge, but she kept her voice even. "No. He's been gone for a few weeks—said he had some things to do. He'll be back soon." _I hope_, she didn't say. Even so, Cid looked at her far too shrewdly for someone who had that much alcohol in his system.

"Hmm. 'Zat so?" He looked as if he might say more, but instead he just shook his head and looked down at the counter top. He frowned as he realized it no longer held a drink. "Barret?"

"Out on a job." Tifa rolled her eyes and put the glass and bottle away, then moved to collapse on a barstool next to Cid. It was strange how tending a bar for a few hours sometimes made her feet hurt more than trekking halfway across the world had. As she slouched against the counter and looked around the empty room, she caught Cid watching her out of the corner of her eye. She sighed and stared at the ceiling.

"Did you come to see me just to drink my alcohol and look surly, or did you want to talk?"

Cid leaned back, swaying. "Fuck. Don' really want to talk." He rolled off the stool, stumbling slightly, and Tifa half-jumped up to catch him. But somehow, instead of falling, he ended up with an arm wrapped around her and his face in her neck.

He looked up at her from a few inches away. "Don' hit me," he mumbled, and Tifa started to roll her eyes, maybe laugh at him. Then he kissed her.

Cid tasted, unsurprisingly, like whiskey; he smelled like whiskey, too—and sweat, smoke and metal. It made Tifa's head spin, and not in an entirely bad way.

She pulled away, and Cid backed off as well, holding on to the bar for support. She blanked her expression while she considered.

She must have looked a bit scarier than she meant to, because Cid's "...Tifa?" was bordering on _timid_, which sounded very strange on Cid. Her lips twitched. Something about the situation hit her, then.

_This is a really bad idea_, she thought abruptly, and then reached out to grab Cid's coat and very deliberately kiss him.

Cid froze dead for a moment, and she wondered what he had expected. Then he responded, and strongly, wrapping his arms around her and sliding his hands underneath her vest at the back to touch skin. He steered her so her back was to the bar counter. One of his hands moved to the zipper of her vest, but then he stopped and broke the kiss.

His voice was rough. "You won't let me get away with anything you don't want, right?"

Tifa did laugh, this time, a little breathlessly. "No. I won't."

He moved the zipper of her vest down until it hung loose. She had a bra on underneath, but he paused there to run a hand over the solid muscles of her abdomen. "Damn, girl." The touch made her skin tingle. "Haven't gone soft yet, eh?"

"Not anytime soon."

Cid grinned. "Good." Then, showing a dexterity that Tifa didn't think he had left, he hooked his hands under her thighs and hoisted her up to sit on the bar. He leaned in to kiss her neck as he reached for the front snap of her bra. His warm breath sent sparks through her. His lips were soft, but his stubble scratched lightly across her skin and made her wish...

"Harder," she said before she realized it, and the brush of his mouth turned into a hard suck and then a _bite_, and she almost didn't notice when his fingers finally undid the clasp and her bra fell open to hang under her arms with her vest.

But she did feel the cold air on her nipples as they hardened. Cid cupped her breasts and he dropped his mouth to one of them instead.

The feel made her gasp out loud, and it said something for how much it dashed her focus that Cid had paused completely for a few moments before she realized he was trying to figure out how to get her lower garments off.

"Zippers," she managed finally, "on the sides." She put her hands on the bar so she could lift her hips while he slid her apron, shorts, and underwear down in one movement. When he struggled for a moment she realized with amusement that she still had her sneakers on, but the clothes were loose enough for him to just pull past them.

When his eyes met hers again she felt a renewed rush of heat. He ran his hands along the bared skin of her thighs, then pushed them wide. She braced her shoes solidly on the barstools to spread herself open. Cid looked at the sight with brazen admiration before dropping to lick at her.

The first touch of his tongue was electric, and it only got more intense after that, his tongue diving into her and brushing rough across her clit. It was hard to measure, but Tifa had a feeling that it took very little time at all before the feeling spiraled out of control, her muscles clamping as she bit back a scream.

Her muscles were acquiring a liquidy feeling when Cid shifted away, and stumbled. He must have been crouching awkwardly to be at the correct height. She stepped down off the bar.

"Are you... What can I do for you?" Tifa looked Cid over, briefly embarrassed as she realized he was still fully clothed.

Cid pulled himself upright. "I, er. Dammit." He rubbed at his hair and looked to one side. "I'd never turn you down, Tifa, but I'm prolly still too drunk to do anything. You carry some damn good whiskey."

Tifa snorted. "I doubt you could tell after the third or fourth glass."

"S'true anyway. Maybe later?"

That implied things Tifa didn't want to think about at the moment. "Maybe. For now, let's find you a place to sleep."


End file.
